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A Brief Word About Twitter

Sorry, this is a little self-indulgent, but I feel bad…someone wanted to follow me on Twitter just now, and I turned them down, so that’s the first real person I’ve said “no” to, I think…and I’m a sap to give a damn but I figure I might as well say something about it. Because even the corporate and business-based Twitter accounts are doubtless run by real people, and I appreciate that, but…

Basically I like to keep it all pretty small on Twitter. I get a lot of use out of it that way, and I’m leery of expanding my tiny little circle for fear it’ll get less useful. Also, for someone who’s really into something that I kind of hate…Twitter’s a bit of an “inside voice” for me, I don’t exactly edit myself a whole lot, so it’s nothing personal but I don’t want to have to start. And yet I don’t want to put a thumb in anybody’s eye, either. So if you’re out there, person I just gave the boot to, then please don’t take offence. I never get pissed if someone drops me or chooses not to follow me, or decides they don’t want me following them: everybody’s got to manage their Internet time as they think best, or it stops being a benefit. And basically I don’t even necessarily track writers and artists I like. Or get tracked by them. So.

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8 responses to “A Brief Word About Twitter”

I’m a little nonplussed that you’re on Twitter in the first place. Since when do you have anything to say that comes in at 140 characters or less?

Not that I know anything about it; I’ve never used Twitter for anything. What are the implications of having someone follow you that you don’t want to have following you? Is it not like having someone subscribing to your RSS feed?

I’ve been twittering in a slightly bemused way for a couple of weeks now, but I have no idea what it’s all about. Apparently Stephen Fry does it a lot. And grammatically-challenged sportsmen with grudges against their employers.

There’s no particular hassle with having someone follow you on Twitter — although spammers are always up to something — but the whole idea of this blog was that it was going to be public, whereas I’m only on Twitter because Dave Fiore sent me an invite-email. Not that I’ve turned away anyone who wasn’t a spammer before…but in this case, the person seemed like a sort of booster of stuff that I’ve been known to use foul language about, and I thought…really, do I want to be thinking about being an asshole, do I want to be deciding to be one?

Clone: Twitter’s a pretty good place to get a news-feed filtered through a taste-group, I find — with a small little clutch of connections, I’ve gotten to have a good feel for what kinds of links are going to pop up, and they’re just about all useful. Also people have been known to say funny things! I definitely found it hard to wrap my head around at first, though. Also sometimes there’s a bloom of “retweeted” information that starts spreading, that can be stuff you didn’t know you wanted to know about. It can absolutely be a handy thing. Although when I see people using it like Facebook, I kind of grit my teeth — how can anyone function when everything 1500 people say shows up for you to read? The very definition of “wall of text”, I don’t know how people manage that kind of intake. But, different strokes I guess…